


One Still Needs to Eat Dinner

by ashenpages



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst, Blindness, Cooking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Reading
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 17:33:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12085926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashenpages/pseuds/ashenpages
Summary: Noct is gone. Ignis carries on. Gladio hates it.





	One Still Needs to Eat Dinner

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first part in a collection of stand alone fics. If it gets difficult to follow the timeline, let me know and I'll do something about it!

Ignis had learned the streets of Lestallum quickly after losing his sight. He’d always been a fast learner, it was part of what had gotten him into the King’s Guard to begin with—not that the king had much use for guards these days, what with his disappearance. The lights the Lestallum power plant fueled helped those who could see find their way through the streets. Ignis learned with his cane, landmarks he found with his fingers, sounds that grounded him and told him where it was. It came easily enough now that he could manage without the cane now. Other things had taken more time. Reading, for example, still eluded him. Not for lack of study, but want of material. A world plunged into demon strewn darkness by the absence of its king had bigger problems than producing braille books and menus for newly impaired members of the King’s Guard.

Still, it had made cooking harder.

“Gladio, could you read me the measurements for the spices,” Ignis requested. He stood in the kitchen of his small apartment, stirring a pot methodically. It wouldn’t do to let the stew burn while he waited for instructions. A shuffle and grumble came from the kitchen table—Gladio no doubt stirring from his own reading, taking his feet down from where he liked to prop them on the table. For a member of the King’s Guard not tasked with relearning everything from simple culinary tasks to the art of demon hunting, Gladio wasn’t adjusting well.

“How you can cook when the world’s like this,” Gladio grumbled.

“The spices, if you please.”

Gladio sighed and began to read. Ignis moved in accordance with Gladio’s instructions, measuring out the spices as Gladio read. “Thank you,” Ignis said, stirring the last dash of pepper into his stew. “I would have been lost without your assistance, and I dare say the stew would have been as well.”

Gladio grunted. There was a breath of tense silence, uncommon for Gladio when their missing fledgling of a king wasn’t the topic of conversation. Perhaps his mind wandered. Ignis could understand. It was easy to lose oneself in memories: the king, the close-knit comradery of the guard, the color the sky turned as dawn broke. Ignis directed his focus back to the seafood stew, giving it another stir.

“I don’t like reading for you, Iggy.”

Ignis turned his head. He knew his tinted visor hid his eyes, as well as the scars surrounding them—but even if his blink of surprise was wasted on Gladio, the other man would have to be blind himself to miss Ignis’s highly raised eyebrows.

“Ah.” Ignis fell silent, calculating. “So then the problem lies with me.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to,” Ignis replied. It wasn’t the first time his new limitations had created inconveniences, burdens for his friends. His sight wasn’t returning, that much was evident. His coordination, his combat skills, his cooking—all of those were re-attainable. Those were coming back, if all too slowly. Sometimes he still hampered his comrades. “I’ll ask Iris or Prompto for their assistance next time they’re in town. Or perhaps old Cid. Goodness knows he’s always one for seafood.”

“I don’t want you asking them to read for you either!”

Ignis sighed and set his spoon down. He turned and leaned against the counter, facing Gladio at the table. “My apologies, I hadn’t realized the methodology with which I conduct my cooking was subject to your mighty whims.”

“Ignis…” Gladio’s tone held a warning.

Ignis decided to poke the bear. “Are you trying to fill in for our missing king?”

There was a slam as Gladio threw his book down on the table. That was the only thing that could have made a noise like that.

“Stop standing there, cooking, pretending everything’s alright,” Gladio barked. “The demons are taking over, the real king—the one who knew what he was doing—is dead, and the new one that we were supposed to be looking out for up and disappeared!” The chair creaked as Gladio sat back down. “And you can’t even look out for anyone anymore.”

Ignis scoffed. “I hope you only mean that literally.”

“Iggy, you can’t see!”

“Yes, thank you, I am aware.” Ignis adjusted his visor the way he used to adjust his glasses.

“Then why the hell aren’t you angry?” Gladio bellowed.

“Because it wouldn’t do any good, Gladio.” Ignis spoke softly, his tone gentle. He sighed again and removed his visor. He left it on the counter next to his cooking spoon. “Look at me, there’s nothing I can do about this. I’ll probably never see again.” Ignis lifted the wooden cooking spoon from where it rested on the counter. “But I can still cook.” He put the spoon down and walked over to Gladio. “I can still walk.” He reached out a hand, hesitantly. Halfway to Gladio’s arm, he stopped. Ignis pulled his hand back to remove the glove from his hand. The extra grip his gloves afforded him still served him well even though his daily tasks had changed. Bare hands would be better for this task, however. He laid his hand on Gladio’s arm. The muscles defined themselves under his fingers, the heavy strain the man put on his body every day evident in the mass of Gladio’s arm. Ignis traced the dark lines of ink he knew adorned Gladio’s arm. Sometimes, if he spent time envisioning it, he could still recall the way they swooped over his shoulders and down his back, the wings and feathers of the eagle that adorned the man’s skin like a living thing. “I can still appreciate your skin even if the beauty of the tattoos that decorate it is lost to me.”

Ignis removed his hand and replaced his glove. He moved back towards the kitchen. Gladio caught his wrist before he’d moved two steps.

“It’s not fair, Ignis.” Gladio’s hand tightened on Ignis’s wrist. “It shouldn’t be like this.”

“Stars above know it’s never what we wanted,” Ignis said gently. “However, it is the way the dice have fallen, I’m afraid.” Ignis tried to take his wrist back from Gladio’s fingers.

Gladio jerked Ignis back towards him. From the angle of the momentum, Gladio must have stood up before pulling. “Stop reminding me,” Gladio growled. “You think I don’t know? Why do you think I sit here night after night reading damn lists of ingredients and stupidly precise measurements at you?”

“Enough!” Ignis ripped his wrist from Gladio’s hand and punched him across the face. Where words sufficed for Ignis, Gladio sometimes required a more hands on approach to understand the gravity of a situation. The chair protested loudly as Gladio dropped back into it. Ignis could imagine the surprise in the tall, muscular man’s eyes—the hand he was in all likelihood holding to his bruised cheek. Ignis’s fingers itched to check, but he held them in place.

“Because it’s bloody well better than giving up and letting all of it kill me!” Ignis yelled. “Noct is coming back or he isn’t. Either way, if I intend to be of any use should he return, I will still need to eat each night.” Ignis turned back to his kitchen and checked on his stew. “And I’ll be damned before I go on a Cup of Noodles diet like you, Gladio.” Ignis huffed and turned his nose up. “It simply isn’t nutritious.”

Gladio’s deep-throated laughter reverberated through the room, warm and rich. “You really haven’t changed, have you?”

“Of course I haven’t.” Ignis removed the stew from the burner and ladled out two bowls. “It’s the world that’s gone and done that.” He placed the bowls on the table and then offered Gladio a spoon. Ignis’s hand hung in the air, no reciprocating sound or touch from Gladio. Ignis rubbed his thumb against the spoon’s handle, nervous without some form of input. What was Gladio thinking? Feeling? Ignis’s fingers itched to read Gladio’s expression. This time he didn’t hold them back. Gladio caught Ignis’s hand as he reached for Gladio’s face.

“Don’t worry, I’m okay.” Gladio let go of Ignis’s hand and took the offered spoon. “Sit down and eat before it gets cold.” The spoon clinked against the bowl as Gladio took his first bite. “The Ignis I know hates it when people let that happen,” Gladio said around his mouthful of stew.

Ignis shot Gladio a wry smile and sat down. “If you know him so well, you’ll also remember his stances on table manners.”

“Right,” Gladio hummed in reply, letting his leg bump against Ignis’s. “He was always a real tightass about that.”

Ignis laid a napkin across Gladio’s leg. “Sounds as if you know him rather well then,” he said, laying a napkin in his own lap. 

Gladio hummed in reply and kept eating. “Hey,” he said between bites. “This is pretty good.”

Ignis smiled quietly and allowed his hand to rest on Gladio’s knee. “I’m glad you like it.” Ignis picked up his spoon, drew his stew to him, and tucked into his dinner. His stomach, however remained hollow.

Perhaps it was time to find another way to cook with his condition.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this and want me to write something else you've been craving, consider commissioning me to write it for you! Send me an [ask on my tumblr if you want to keep it private](ashenpages.tumbr.com), or email me at fanficsbyash@gmail.com.
> 
> Seriously, I love writing this stuff for you all, so even if it's a tiny commission, hit me up. Writing fic that's specially designed to make you smile is my favorite thing to do, even if it's only a few hundred words long.


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